Piddingworth Greg Benton
'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.'
                                                                               Mark Steyn
The recent terrorist attacks and threats in London and Glasgow have
underscored an unfortunate characteristic that is powerfully at play
in our contemporary culture, i.e., the weakness of self-loathing;
mixed with wilful ignorance, the fantasy of multiculturalism and topped off
with a dollop of 'I'm all right, Jack' indifference.

I have had the pleasure of knowing and teaching some fine Muslim
students from some fine Muslim families; immigrants to Canada from
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Some were exceptional in every sense that
one would hope for a young person, not only academically, but in personal character and deportment. 

As far as I was able to tell, there was nothing about these people that was
anything but to be respected and admired as citizens.  Indeed, I was
very glad to have been able to offer them recommendations and support
as they pursued their careers.

They did not demonstrate, to me at least, any particular political point
of view or anything that could in any way be regarded as 'extreme'.
Our conversations were as pleasant and civilised as one might expect
of people cultured in manners and ethics.
It would be ridiculous for me to imagine any of these fine young men and women as a threat and an 'enemy' to me,
to my family,to Canada, Britain, western society, Christianity, the Church or our way of life. 

I wonder, now, if some others, who know those physicians recently identified in the failed bomb attacks in Glasgow
and London, might have regarded these 'learned' men in the same way. 

The enormous migration in recent decades of people's from certain parts of the Commonwealth to the older
Dominions of Canada, Australia as well as Mother Britain, has had a dramatic impact on the societies in which they settled. 
This is especially true of the UK where whole communities have rapidly emerged with an identity that is neither British
or 'western' but a deeply visible and sometimes 'defiant' and ever-present challenge to the host culture. 

The policy of 'multiculturalism' that paved the way for this immigration and that former Canadian PM Pierre Trudeau
entrenched in his Constitution Act, 1982, made it, not only a cultural, but a legal characteristic of Canadian society.
A consequence of this has been the assertion by those who embrace the notion of multiculturalism, that to not
support the policy is 'racist' and 'un-Canadian'; both of which are utter, but widely-accepted, nonsense.

Celebrating, accomodating, and welcoming people from 'other cultures' is a wonderful and very civilised thing.
Certainly the quality of cuisine, the varieties of music and the arts, among other things, has dramatically improved
the groaning boards and colour of our cities.  This, however, is not what the policy of multiculturalism is.

Instead, we are told, and many are held to account for affirming that, 'all cultures are equal' and that in most cases,
'minority', i.e., non-British, cultures take precedence over the dominant culture.  This has meant that, for succeeding
generations of immigrants, their primary cultural identity and loyalty can, and ought to be, that from which they
came and not that to which they have come.  Indeed, one Canadian secondary school textbook plainly stated that
'Canada has no culture of it's own' but is 'many cultures'; that being 'Canadian' means not being 'Canadian'.
Thus has the Maple Leaf been transformed from a symbol of a country that helped to liberate the world in two wars
to a logo for 'place of residence' with the implicit intent of displacing the priority of a distinctly 'Canadian' culture
with its history, manners, habits, and mores.

Multicultural hypocrisy abounds in public policy as well as in the media.

'Italian' Canadians, even in the third or fourth generation, may have a Canadian accent and eat poutine but when it
comes to football, they cheer for Italia before the team with the Maple Leaf on the jersey.  When Ben Johnson, the
infamous sprinter, started out he was a 'Jamaican' immigrant in Canada.  As he progressed, he became in due course,
the Jamaican-Canadian Ben Johnson until he 'broke' the 100 metre record at the Olympics when he became the
'Canadian' Ben Johnson.  Like 'snakes 'n ladders', after he was found to have had steroids and lost his gold medal,
he slowly slid back to the 'Jamaican-born' Ben Johnson.  Yet, when Greg Rudsedski, the tennis player, born a
Canadian and British Subject, of an English mother, chose to play for England, there were howls of derision for
'betraying' Canada whilst in Britain there were howls of derision for his not being 'British' enough.  Oh, please.
Rudyard Kipling was born in India and I've yet to see him described as that 'great Indian writer'.

The common thread to these multi-cultural shell games is the apparent self-loathing and spineless ignorance, not
of those who come, but of those who control the entrances and exits of the country.  Whether in pursuit of an
illusory 'we are the world' notion of society with it's implicit, and inevitably tragic, denial of the conflicts inherent
in cross-cultural intersection, or out of sloppy and shallow sentimentalism, the purveyors of the nation as
smörgåsbord have weakend the very foundation that has afforded such a table of cultural delights; the cultural
'stuff' that holds it all together, i.e., the people, the laws, the institutions, the history and the principles of
citizenship that produced the civilisation that established the 'English-speaking peoples' in diverse places.
After a growing population is informed that this inheritance and cultural identity is not important or is 'oppressive'
or is not worthy of one's respect, the void that will have and has ultimately emerged will be filled by some
other loyalty be it political, ethnic or religious.

Why anyone should be surprised at the terror that is taking place around the world is incredulous.
For several decades, our societies have betrayed and eschewed the culture to which we belong; have failed to
proudly educated our young people in their own history, their literature, their great achievements, their heroes,
and even have denigrated those things, whilst turning a blind eye to those in our midst whose identity
and loyalty is being revealed as more and more hostile to the place, the people, the way of life, indeed the very
freedom to which they have come and in which they have grown.

With the world's affairs shaping as they are, including the cultural falsehood that is the European Union, with some parallels
in the not-too-distant past, we had better wake up very quickly and re-discover who we are, from what we were,
to ensure that what we will be resembles something of the same; where the 'Sherriff of Nottingham' is not
transformed into the 'Sharif of Sharia'.

We can only demand of immigrants what we, ourselves, are prepared to assert, celebrate, defend and demand
as British, Canadian, Australian or American citizens.  It may seem a daunting task for this generation to
begin to accomplish after decades of indifference and foolish neglect but the consequence of continued
self-loathing and moral cowardice will require, without any doubt, a sacrifice of much greater proportion.

As Pogo says:  We have met the enemy and he is us.

When Reality's Up For Grabs
The Culture of Self-loathing & Betrayal.